Rice

The torta Chingona at Tacos Don Pillo is a beast of a sandwich, a tower of asada steak, jamon asado, tomato, onion, jalapeno, avocado and big slabs of salty, squeaky queso fresco. It’s enough to share, or satiate in a way that requires a nap shortly after. It is the star of the Tacos Don Pillo menu, an expansive list of tacos, quesadillas, burritos, salads, nachos and mulitas. Some days require the heft of the torta Chingona, others lean toward the tacos camarones. The trio of corn tortillas barely contain the plump, grilled shrimp, sweet and smoky grilled onions and slivers of avocado. Expect a perpetual line anywhere near an established meal time, but things move quickly.

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WASHINGTON — Warner Bros. Discovery is switching gears, announcing Thursday that Paramount Skydance’s revised bid tops the one on the table from Netflix.

The move is the latest twist in Hollywood’s biggest auction in years — and five months after Paramount Chairman David Ellison began his dogged pursuit of the larger media company. Netflix now has four business days to regroup and potentially submit a higher offer.

Warner Bros. Discovery said its board, in consultation with its bankers and lawyers, determined Paramount’s most recent offer constitutes a “superior proposal,” compared to the Netflix deal.

Paramount on late Monday bid to buy all of Warner Bros. Discovery for $31 a share in cash. Paramount had previously offered $30 a share.

Netflix has offered $27.75 a share — but the streaming giant only wants Warner’s HBO, HBO Max and the Warner Bros. film and television studios in Burbank. Concerns have been growing that Netflix would face push-back from regulators as it seeks to swallow one of Hollywood’s historic film studios behind “Superman,” “Casablanca” and “The Matrix.”

Paramount’s offer includes acquiring Warner’s cable television channels like CNN and HGTV.

“We are pleased WBD’s Board has unanimously affirmed the superior value of our offer, which delivers to WBD shareholders superior value, certainty and speed to closing,” said David Ellison, the chairman and chief executive of Paramount.

The new wrinkle comes as Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos met with White House staffers on Thursday at a pivotal moment for the streaming giant, which has been navigating the high-stakes bidding war to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.

Sarandos met with White House staff members and Justice Department officials, according to two people familiar with the meeting. The visit was arranged more than two weeks ago and President Trump was not scheduled to attend.

The White House and Netflix declined to comment on the substance of the meeting, but it comes as the media giant has come under pressure by the president to fire board member Susan Rice, a former Biden administration adviser that Trump recently called a “political hack.”

Trump warned that if Netflix did not fire Rice, the company would “pay the consequences.”

The president’s demands to fire Rice marked a shift in the president’s involvement with Netflix’s business as it seek to acquire Warner Bros — a bid that is being countered by Paramount.

In December, Netflix won the bidding for the storied studio and HBO, prompting Paramount executives to launch a multi-pronged strategy to scuttle the Netflix deal.

The Department of Justice has since opened an investigation to determine whether to try to block Netflix’s proposed $82.7-billion deal to take over Warner Bros. Discovery. Netflix has more than 300 million subscribers worldwide, and the addition of Warner’s HBO Max would make the streaming giant even more dominant.

Sarandos’ trek to the White House comes as the auction has taken on political dimensions. Paramount has refused to abandon its campaign to buy Warner, which owns HBO and such popular franchises as Harry Potter, Superman and “Game of Thrones.”

Paramount — which is controlled by the family of billionaire Larry Ellison, a Trump friend — has been angling to thwart Netflix.

During a Senate hearing this month, some Republican lawmakers blasted Sarandos, raising questions about potential antitrust concerns and some of Netflix’s programming. Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison declined an invitation to participate in the Feb. 3 hearing.

This week, he was at the Capitol as a guest of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for Trump’s State of the Union address. The two men were pictured giving a thumbs-up in a photo circulating on social media.

Trump has said he would stay out of the Netflix-versus-Paramount battle, but over the weekend he demanded, in a social media post, that Netflix “IMMEDIATELY” fire Rice from its board.

It was not known if the topic of Rice came up Thursday.

Sarandos has sought to downplay the controversy, saying during a BBC interview: “This is a business deal, it’s not a political deal.”
Paramount has enlisted a former Trump administration official, the lawyer Makan Delrahim, who served as Trump’s antitrust chief during the president’s first term.

Caracas, February 25, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelan rice producers have staged demonstrations in recent days, demanding responses from authorities to secure fair prices for their harvests.

Campesino organizations from Barinas, Cojedes, Guárico, and Portuguesa states have held meetings with their respective governors and local representatives of the Agriculture Ministry to denounce pressure from agribusiness conglomerates imposing lower prices for their crops.

Victor Martínez, a rice producer and representative from a rural association in Portuguesa state, told Venezuelanalysis that there is an urgent need to establish appropriate crop prices with harvesting set to begin in the coming days.

“We are calling on the Venezuelan government, from Acting President Delcy Rodríguez to Agriculture Minister Julio León Heredia, to intervene and help set fair prices for rice that take into account our production costs,” he explained. “We cannot have the agroindustrial conglomerates imposing prices unilaterally.”

According to Martínez, rural producers sold rice crops at $0.50-0.55 per kilogram last year, and presently the Iancarina group, the biggest agribusiness firm in Portuguesa state, is offering $0.32-0.38 per kilo. Iancarina holds significant market shares nationwide in corn flour and rice distribution with its “Mary” brand and has ties to the US-based transnational commodities marketer GSI Food.

“These prices would mean the extinction of rice production, jeopardizing thousands of jobs in the countryside,” Martínez continued. “We urge authorities to establish dialogue mechanisms that take our production costs into account.”

The rice growers additionally denounced that corporations have recently imported rice to drive down crop prices and that Venezuelan producers cannot compete with international prices due to “exorbitant production costs.” AgroPatria, a state-owned company that supplied agricultural inputs to campesinos, was turned over to private group AgroLlano in 2020.

Martínez stated that $0.70 per kilo of rice is the price Portuguesa producers have set as a target in negotiations.

“There are too many hurdles to produce right now, from very expensive inputs to a lack of access to credit,” he went on to add. “The same agroindustry corporations offer financing but with draconian conditions and our profit margins vanish.”

According to Martínez, current financing agreements see companies supply inputs and then collect as much as 60 percent of the crop as payment. 

“Agribusiness oligopolies say that they are better off just importing rice, which carries no risk for them. But no country can survive without agriculture.” He concluded with a call for halting imports and extending state support to campesino producers.

In recent days, rural collectives in different states have shared their production costs and come up with different proposals for Venezuelan authorities. They are likewise weighing the possibility of staging a rally in Caracas to demand the intervention of the Agriculture Ministry. Venezuelan government officials have yet to comment on the controversy.

In recent years, with the economy heavily constrained by US sanctions, the Nicolás Maduro government moved to liberalize agricultural policies, transferring former state competencies to the private sector, including provisioning of seed and fertilizer inputs and access to tractors. Fuel subsidies have likewise been phased out, with small-scale producers denouncing it as a major factor driving up production costs.

Campesino collectives have repeatedly drawn attention to a growing agribusiness influence both in the supply of inputs and the commercialization of harvests. Food conglomerates have used their control of silos and retail channels as well as imports during harvest season, to drive up profit margins by imposing lower prices on producers.

Apart from rice, farmers have condemned similar coercive practices with sugar and coffee. Standoffs have traditionally led to mediation from state authorities and a temporary agreement on prices. However, campesinos have repeatedly alerted that agribusiness firms stop honoring established prices or delay payments to take advantage of the Venezuelan currency devaluation.

Edited by Lucas Koerner in Fusagasugá, Colombia.